A Dangerously False Narrative

The Facts:  

• COVID vaccines have been administered to hundreds and hundreds of millions of people around the world.  
• REAL adverse events have been very rare and serious reactions are even more rare.  
• The SARS-CoV-2 virus not only kills, it can have many long-term effects that we are still learning about.  Damage to the economy and to our healthcare system is devastating. 
• Unvaccinated individuals continue to sicken and die in numbers out of proportion to their numbers in the whole population, no matter what country you look at.  
• The vast majority of healthcare professionals, researchers, immunologists and microbiologists do not downplay the seriousness of the SARS virus and recognize the COVID vaccines as very significant tools that will protect us and move us beyond this pandemic.
• Conspiracy theorists peddle in uncertainty and fear by misusing data presented in sound bites that misrepresent and distort the real facts.  Or, they make things up completely.
• In the USA, roughly 1 in 250 people have died - so far - from COVID.  In Canada, the numbers are significantly better.  Why?  Less politicization of the pandemic.
• In the USA, once again, COVID is still causing deaths at a rate of nearly 200,000 on an annual basis.  Disinformation specialists constantly try to make that seem like no big deal.

The Problem:

A nagging concern I've had about The Valley Voice for some time is that it's become an outlet for conspiracy theories, cranks, and inaccurate reporting when it comes to anything to do with the ongoing COVID situation.

This was confirmed, once again, by Art Joyce's article in the February 9^th edition.  That article can be seen on page 16.

The author, by using extensive statistics cherry-picked to suit his view of things, a number of so-called experts, interlaced with comments like the “...best available research”, likely assumes that nobody will follow up on any of the multitude of allegations he makes in his article.  Let's examine those claims more closely.

Main Takeaways

Mr Joyce headlines his article as "Seeking an Accurate Picture of Adverse Vaccine Reactions".  Unfortunately, for all his seeking, he has failed to find.  Here's why:

• Every single "expert" he mentions is notable mainly for being a COVID denier, a conspiracy promoter, or otherwise unsupported outside the little echo chamber of the anti-vaccine movement.  I've listed them below noting some of their dubious connections.
• One of Mr Joyce's contentions is that "concerned physicians and healthcare advocates" want to hear from anyone with a complaint.  The clear fact is that Mr Joyce is referring to a select group of people who will take anything they can find, distort it as much as possible and then use it to try and discredit the vaccines that have saved millions of lives.
• Numbers purporting to support his position are either misinterpreted, misunderstood or manipulated to serve the agenda the author is trying to promote.

Some details:

The "Experts":

I was unable to find any of Mr Joyce's "experts" who weren't widely categorized as conspiracy theorists or promoters of vaccine misinformation or disinformation (in other words, they are either mistaken or possibly just plain lying).  In tossing around most of those names, Mr Joyce is engaging in the Logical Fallacy called "Appeal to Authority".  Since they mostly all have Dr in front of their names, the assumption is they MUST be telling you the truth.  Readers should know by now that it takes more than a PhD to establish credibility.  Some examples:

Dr Charles Hoffe & Dr Stephen Malthouse – both have been the subject of complaints from many other doctors for the inaccuracies they have promoted. Dr Hoffe is being investigated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC (CPSBC), not for reporting Adverse Events, as Mr Joyce implies, but rather for promoting fake, unapproved and ineffective treatments to patients.  To quote from the CPSBC ... 

"The hearing of the citation issued for Dr. Charles Douglas Hoffe, a family physician practising in or around Lytton and Kamloops, BC, has been scheduled for February 13 to 17, 21 to 24, and 27, 2023. The hearing will proceed virtually, subject to further order of the Discipline Committee.

At the hearing, a panel of the Discipline Committee will inquire into Dr. Hoffe’s alleged misconduct, namely that, he contravened standards imposed under the Health Professions Act, including but not limited to the Canadian Medical Association’s Code of Ethics and Professionalism by publishing statements on social media and other digital platforms that were misleading, incorrect or inflammatory about vaccinations, treatments, and public measures relating to COVID-19. "

Dr Naomi Wolf – has a BA and a Doctorate in Philosophy in English Literature. She is a writer, avid conspiracy promoter and consistent critic of COVID vaccines.  It's unclear if she has ANY credentials that have anything to do with science, healthcare or any related field.

Steve Kirsch – noted for promoting vaccine misinformation and has feuded with regulatory agencies because they wouldn't allow a drug to be used that he was promoting based on a small limited study.

Dr Patrick Phillips - had his medical license revoked after making misleading, inflammatory or incorrect statements about vaccines and COVID-19 treatments and public health methods.  The case against Dr Phillips was quite extensive, as outlined in this article.

Igor Chudov - seems to be unknown in legitimate science circles but he has spent a great deal of time on Twitter, mostly spreading disinformation (aka: lies) about vaccines.

Edward Dowd - has a YouTube following and, as we all know, YouTube is never the central clearing house for ANY of the latest in legitimate scientific breakthroughs.

These people are ALL charlatans.  An article from McGill University went further:  

"The Disinformation Dozen generates two thirds of anti-vaccination content on Facebook and Twitter - A Dozen Misguided Influencers Spread Most of the Anti-Vaccination Content on Social Media"

 

Nasty "Big Pharma"

A common mantra from the anti-vaccine crowd is that pharmaceutical companies have been engaged in a conspiracy to hide safety issues.  Mr Joyce repeats a common claim that data was "forced" out of Pfizer, and that the released data shows that the vaccines damage the immune system, among other claims. This is a clear misrepresentation of the real facts, to put it politely.  In fact, no such thing happened, as this article makes very clear.

Did Pfizer attempt to "hide" 158 thousand adverse events for 75 years?  No.  

This article presents 8 facts that refute such claims in their entirety.

Death Rates

Mr Joyce then dives into something he calls the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). In other words, of the people infected, how many died?  Most legitimate sources mention that using Infection Rates for any calculations would have to be an estimate because there is simply no way of knowing how many people have been infected. In the beginning of the pandemic, very few.  These days. perhaps 80% of the population.  Most legitimate researchers prefer to use Case Fatality Rate (CFR), in other words, how many people with confirmed cases of COVID actually died.

Furthermore, making claims about IFR or CFR at this stage in the pandemic is a bit disingenuous. The most important reason is simply this: Since so many people have been vaccinated and so many people have been infected with the virus, often both, fatality rates have obviously dropped because of all the acquired immunity.  We were looking for "Herd Immunity"?  Well, we might be getting close to that now, in this country.

It's true that NOW, deaths are far less common than they were earlier in the pandemic. So to pass COVID off as just a case of the flu hearkens back to the early days when some were claiming (falsely) that COVID was just another flu bug. A lot of people died, boys and girls, a lot of people died from that “flu” bug. IFRs and CFRs were much higher earlier on, a fact Mr Joyce doesn't mention. Not as many are dying now, in large part because vaccines did such a great job. People who subsequently contracted the virus after being vaccinated seldom died and acquired better immunity as a result. Mr Joyce neglects to discuss this at all. Why not?

If anyone wishes to dig into Mortality risks, Our World in Data is worth reading carefully.

Let's leave CFRs, IFRs and all that with a simple example.  In China, at the beginning of the pandemic, the Case Fatality Rate in Wuhan was over 20%.  Clearly, it didn't stay like that forever, and it's now in the low single digits, even with the dramatic resurgence of cases and deaths as an outcome of the Chinese government's gross mishandling of the entire pandemic in that country.

However, Mr Joyce made a decision to downplay the effects of the virus by incorrectly using IFRs using recent data as if to point out how unnecessary all the public health orders were, how the vaccines weren't needed, and so on.  Mr Joyce couldn't be more wrong.  The simple fact is that death rates are low NOW because of public health practices and the vaccines, helped by a slight decrease in virulence on the part of the virus in more recent mutations and the large numbers of people who have experienced a (mild) infection first-hand..

CAERS and VAERS

People who never heard about VAERS and the even less well-known CAERS mere months ago have suddenly become experts in these two databases.  Unfortunately, the average person completely misunderstands what these databases are for and how they work.  Mr Joyce seems to have the average person's poor understanding of what these databases are and how they work.

The misunderstanding, often deliberate, has become so bad that reputable medical establishments have felt the need to comment on what VAERS is and what it isn't.

These are databases where literally anyone can report anything, anything at all, about their experience with vaccination.  There is no filtering and therefore no way to ascertain anything from the raw data in the reports.  How many are fake?  How many are real?  How many are trivial?  Who knows....UNTIL each report is reviewed by experts and the relevance is determined.

This means anyone scrolling through the raw data will see some impressive numbers, supposedly representing deaths, heart attacks, miscarriages, almost anything, really.  NONE of that data is of any use until it has been reviewed.  Mr Joyce doesn't mention that either.  In fact, he goes further, claiming that one needs to multiply any reported "adverse events" by 100, just because Mr Joyce claims the numbers are vastly underreported.  That's a neat statistical trick as long as nobody notices what you did.

What Mr Joyce refuses to acknowledge, or perhaps doesn't understand, is that it is impossible for him or anyone to draw ANY conclusions from the raw data.  That's NOT what the database is for.  Look it up if you don't believe me.

Mr Joyce notes that an outfit called "vaxxtracker.com" is adding its own "data" to these databases.  So, we have an anti-vaccine conspiracy group adding more unconfirmed data to a system that already is full of unconfirmed data.  I can see less clarity in our future.

If you want to read more about how VAERS and CAERS are being misused, VICE magazine had a good article on this back in February 2021 entitled Anti-Vaxxers Misuse Federal Data to Falsely Claim COVID Vaccines are Dangerous..  There are MANY other articles explaining the same thing.  As the anti-vaxxers like to say: "Do your research".

Mr Joyce probably had a limit to the number of column inches he had available, thankfully.  It's a pity he was given any space at all.  Although not mentioned specifically by Mr Joyce in his screed, I'd like to address a few more topics that anti-vaxxers peddle, endlessly.

COVID Deaths

Although the Anti-Vaxxers like to promote fake stories about the "thousands who have died following vaccination", the REAL story is how COVID deaths have likely been under-estimated or under-counted, both in Canada and around the world.

In Canada, an expert panel from the Council of Canadian Academies just recently (January 2023) issued a report called Fault Lines, highlighting the costs of growing science and health misinformation.  The panel concluded that this misinformation cost the Canadian healthcare system an estimated $300 million and resulted in an additional 2800 deaths, just during the 9 months of the COVID pandemic in 2021.  As the National Post reported, 

"According to the far-ranging report, between March and November 2021, misinformation helped sway an estimated 2.4 million people in Canada to delay or refuse to get vaccinated against COVID. Had they been vaccinated as soon as they became eligible, by the end of November 2021, there would have been nearly 200,000 fewer cases of COVID and 13,000 fewer hospitalizations."

What this all means is that now, we can see the actual cost of lies.  Promoters of all this fake nonsense now have blood on their hands.

By the way, it now seems pretty clear that the number of COVID deaths is far higher than the official numbers would indicate.  This is one article that explains why.

Sudden Deaths After Vaccination

The anti-vaccine conspiracy cult has taken to claiming that huge numbers of people have "died suddenly following vaccination".  Not only is there no evidence to support this claim, a multitude of researchers and medical people/institutions have weighed in on this topic.  Some examples:

• Young Athletes Dying from Vaccines?  That's a Hoax
• Covid-19 vaccines and Sudden Deaths.  Separating Fact from Fiction
• No Evidence Deaths from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome are really caused by Vaccines.
• "Died Suddenly" Pushes Bogus Depopulation Theory
• Fact Check - Viral video promotes baseless vaccine depopulation theory

The simple fact is this:  There has been NO huge surge of "sudden deaths" in the way claimed by anti-vaxxers.  As The Donald used to say, it's "Fake News", or perhaps, as his former press secretary used to say, "Alternative Facts".  Let's just call them lies.

What About All Those Adverse Events?

Anti-vaccine followers have taken to pointing at supposedly thousands of Adverse Events as fallout from the vaccines.  What they've latched onto is a long list of things called Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESIs).  What the anti-vaccine folk want you believe is that these are all things that have happened to people following vaccination.  That's not true, and I suspect they know it, but would rather lie  because it suits their agenda and they know some people will believe them.

Adverse Events of Special Interest are developed BEFORE a vaccine is even tested on people.  It's a list of things that researchers are supposed to specifically watch for, to see if they happen.  The reason is simply an expression of extreme caution.  Some events might be so rare that they might only show up after millions of doses of a vaccine.  Nonetheless, researchers are to watch specifically for any that might show up.

So, did they show up?  No.  Which is why regulatory agencies like the CDC, the FDA and Health Canada, as well as regulatory agencies around the world, believe these vaccines are safe..

The agency that anti-vaxxers love to hate, the CDC (Centres for Disease Control) regularly posts good information about adverse events.  Contrary to Mr Joyce's beliefs, the reason government agencies continue saying that the vaccines are safe and effective is simply because they are.  Mr Joyce may firmly believe that the CDC, Health Canada, the FDA, the European Medicines Agency, the MHRA in Britain, and all the others around the world, are in on a giant conspiracy to kill us all, but I seriously doubt that.  These agencies have people working in them.  Those people have families, children, grandparents.  It's ridiculous beyond belief that they are ALL in on a plot to kill us all.

mRNA - Everyday Workhorse or a Big Pharma Poison?

This controversy is a good example why Biology should be a mandatory subject in High School.

I continually see comments about the vaccines containing poisons.  Nobody bothers to explain exactly what the poison is in these vaccines, so let's look to see what's really in them.

• mRNA - Messenger Ribonucleic Acid.  A single-stranded piece of genetic material that already exists in most cells of our bodies, used to make proteins, by reading the code on our own DNA and carrying that code to ribosomes where the proteins are assembled.  mRNA cannot change your own DNA.  It's true that some RNA viruses can change DNA, but that requires an enzyme called reverse transcriptase.  Remember, mRNA is already in your cells and has been since before birth.
• Lipids - fats, in other words, used to encapsulate the mRNA so it can survive long enough to carry it's code into your cells.  This was one of the biggest hurdles in making the first mRNA vaccines - finding a way to keep the mRNA active long enough so it could do its job before is was broken down by the body and recycled.
• Salts - yes, salts.  Not much of interest here.  Potassium salts, often.
• Sugar - not good if we eat too much of it, but not generally called a poison.

Vaccine ingredients are easy to learn about.  Lots of online information is available.  One such source can be seen here.

One other aspect is the dose of vaccine we are given.  The current shots are less than 0.5 ml.  We're talking less than half a millilitre.  Even many of the REAL known toxins would have difficulty killing you at that level.

Why Are They Doing This?

I sense desperation.  

This is the first pandemic any of us have really experienced.  While anti-vaxxers have been around for decades and seemed to start up when the first vaccine was administered (smallpox, back in the 1800s), the need for most vaccinations has been pretty relaxed.  Very few viruses circulate as widely and kill as many people as the SARS-CoV-2 virus has in the past 3 years.  And it's not over yet.  Most sensible people recognized very early that this virus was serious, they took precautions and, when a vaccine was available, they got it.  Evidence of the very high vaccine effectiveness has been EXCEPTIONALLY clear right from the beginning.  This makes it difficult for anti-vaxxers to continue their campaign of fear-mongering in any way that most people will take seriously.  And now, we know who these people are.  We know their distortions have resulted in more deaths and greater damage to the economy.  This seems to mean they feel the need to make even more outrageous claims just to seed doubt.

Distrust of governments and government agencies can be understandable at times, but it's no excuse to ignore the evidence and advice of thousands of researchers and medical professionals around the world when it's clear that distortions and lies from the anti-vaccine movement will cost the lives of many people, from this virus and others.

Mr Joyce might not wish to know better, but I expect better from The Valley Voice.

Update:

I've received a few comments from poorly informed individuals about my post.  Here is one example:

You are delusional. Covid is no worse than a seasonal flu - with the usual suspects dying from it - the old and immuno compromised. The "vaccine" has been proven to be a biological weapon - developed by the US DoD using the pharmaceutical companies as their willing accomplices.

Get your facts straight.  --- Anonymous, of course.

I'll leave it to other readers who might care about facts to decide whether Anonymous is correct or not. Access to a few basic facts should help people decide who is really deluded.